U.S. patent applications Ser. No. 07/615,800, filed Nov. 16, 1990, now issued U.S. Pat. No. 5,139,684, entitled "Electrically Conductive Methods and Systems for Treatment of Blood and/or Other Body Fluids and/or Synthetic Fluids With Electric Forces"--Steven Kaali and Peter M. Schwolsky, Inventors, discloses novel electrically conductive methods and systems for transferring blood and/or other body fluids (such as amniotic fluids), and/or synthetic fluids such as tissue culture medium, from a donor to a transfusion recipient or storage receptacle, or vice versa, or for recirculating a single donor's blood or other body fluids through components of a treatment system external of the body or by implant devices for purging such contaminants. This treatment uses a novel low voltage, low current electrically operated vessel for direct electric treatment of blood and/or other body fluids, and/or synthetic fluids with electric field forces of appropriate field strength to attenuate contaminants such as bacteria, virus, fungus or parasites contained in the blood and/or other body fluid and/or synthetic fluids, and thereby render such contaminants and/or fluids ineffective to infect or affect normally healthy human cells. "Attenuate" means to reduce the infectivity of the blood, other body fluids, and/or synthetic fluids such as tissue culture medium being treated. The attenuation is believed to be achieved either by the direct and/or indirect physical effect of the electricity on the virus, bacteria, parasites and/or fungus, and/or the removal of such contaminants from the fluid being treated. The treatment, however, does not damage the fluid or render blood or other body fluid biologically unfit for use in humans or other mammals after the treatment. The treatment can be achieved with electric field forces during normally occurring transfer processing from a donor to a recipient or collection receptacle, or vice versa, or during recirculation of a single donor's blood or other body fluids, and/or synthetic fluids. A similar method and system using alternating current voltage and current is described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/615,437 filed on Nov. 16, 1990 concurrently with the above-described U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/615,800 now issued U.S. Pat. No. 5,139,684. The disclosures of both these applications hereby are incorporated into the disclosure of this application in their entirety.
The above-described novel method and system originally disclosed in the above-noted pending U.S. patent applications did not, however, include within its disclosure appropriate and efficient means for screening out larger particles that might be entrained in the fluid being treated which are larger than 0.2 microns in size, prior to treatment. To overcome this deficiency, the present invention was devised.